The books draw together a wide selection of subjects
including zoology, geography, mythology, poetry, history, art, philosophy,
storytelling and drama (something for everyone, I hope), each with a strong
nature theme.
Please use the comments box to say what you’ve been reading
this year, and what books you might recommend on the subjects of wildlife,
nature, or plants and animals in general.
Or if you’ve got any comments on my selections, join in that debate too!
Direct links are given to online bookstores, but please don't forget to support your local, independent bookshop - they need you this Christmas!
Day 1 - book of the day:
Tim Birkhead
Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird
Published by: Bloomsbury, 2012Available from Amazon and Waterstones.
How would it feel to be a bird? Never mind just feeling,
what would the world look like? How would it smell? How would it sound and
taste? If you wanted to navigate your way around the world as part of a mass
migration, how would you go about it? What would be your impulse?
These are all difficult questions to answer and ask us
consider the classic problems such as whether or not birds have consciousness
and whether they experience true emotions.
In the hands Tim Birkhead (author of the brilliant and hugely successful The Wisdom of Birds, a tough act to
follow!), whose career as a Professor of Zoology at the
University of Sheffield has been spent being engrossed in researching such
matters, these questions unravel in a book of strong, authoritative but clear
sense (and Birkhead reminds us that there are many questions which remain
unanswered in these difficult areas).
The book is divided into seven chapters, corresponding to
the seven senses that are up for discussion.
The first five senses are those we humans recognise as our own: 1)
Seeing; 2) Hearing; 3) Touch; 4) Taste; and 5) Smell. In addition to this, there is a chapter on
magnetic sense, and another on emotions.
There are lots of surprising and fascinating things I
learned from this. He tells us that nightingales in the noisy, urban
environment of Berlin sing 14dB louder than their rural counterparts, and sing
more loudly on weekday mornings during the rush-hour. By contrast, Great tits do not adjust the
volume of their song, but change the frequency and pitch of their song to
ensure that they are heard in an urban setting.
Singing is of course a bird’s way of claiming its territory for the
breeding season, and its silence at other times of year isn’t just behavioural
but biological. For male birds, the part
of their brain responsible for singing shrinks at the end of the breeding season,
growing again in time for spring (incidentally, the same is true of their
gonads). Migrating birds that rely on the earth’s magnetic field as their GPS
will completely lose their sense of magnetic direction if fitted with an eye
patch over their right eye, but remain unaffected if the patch is placed over
their left eye.
Not only is it a fascinating read, but it’s also very
amusing. Along the way, we not only
learn about the extraordinary capabilities of many birds, but were introduced
to a large number of human characters: mad scientists and amateur mavericks who
have carried out all manner of crazy experiments on birds over the centuries in
an attempt to untangle the unfathomable wonders of various species.
There is great humour and clarity throughout, all performed
without irreverence for the subject and him without patronising the reader. Birkhead has a great affection for his
subject which never descends into revere, but remains firmly in the realm of
the fascinated scientist who has lost none of his curiosity from years of
research, and who’s able to communicate his infectious fascination in this
highly readable book.
Perfect Partner
Karen Shanor and Jagmeet Kanwal
Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: the Surprising Science of Animals’ Inner Lives
Published by:Icon Books, 2009Available from Amazon and Waterstones
Unlike Bird Sense,
this book provides gems of insight to many species of animal which are
cherry-picked for interest from across the world. Despite this general appeal, both authors
write with great experience as academics in their field; Shanor is
neuroscientist having worked at Nasa’s Life Sciences department, including many
other positions; Kanwal is professor a Physiology and Biophysics. The book is in three parts: Sensing,
Surviving and Socialising, with an Epilogue on ‘Human Nature’ Reconsidered. The authors do seem very keen to make this an
‘easy read’, and so the tone of the book is rather on the simplistic side,
although the great array of facts put forward will certainly be of interest to
most general readers.
In the course of the chapters, we encounter accounts of coyotes
with regional accents (including those in the mountains which, having learnt by
ear, incorporate the mountainous echo into the calls), polar bears who can
smell a meal up to 20 miles away, and charming stories such as the rooster that
learnt to deceive by pecking at bare ground in order to find himself surrounded
by large numbers of hens (they’d previously ignored his mating call, poor boy). Even when the writing is at its most
lightweight, there are some fascinating facts that will make your eyes
water. Cockroaches, we are told, can
have up to two million ‘babies’ a year (I’m not sure what a young cockroach is
called either, but I can’t help thinking they’re rather too small to have
babies); they can live for up to two weeks after being decapitated (the authors
remind us kindly that this means they’ve had their head chopped off); and they can
withstand about 100,000 times the level of radiation as humans (‘It has long
been said that if humans are ever stupid enough to destroy our planet, it would
be the cockroaches that would survive and start a whole new zoological cycle.’).Much as it is a lightweight, easy read, it’s an entertaining read, and certainly a book that would make a good present for young readers as well as adults. It is certainly one of the most quotable books for grabbing people’s attention in an instant...if you’ve already tried pecking at the floor, that is.
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